n what follows, I am going to cite and paraphrase at length from a letter written on April 4, 1904 by President Theodore Roosevelt, a man of extraordinary erudition, wisdom, and courage. Roosevelt wrote more than 100,000 letters and 40 books, but his letter of April 4, 1904 is especially relevant to Israel [and to Moshe Ya’alon’s interview in The Jerusalem Post of May 1, 2009]. The letter concerns the question of Philippine independence and may well be applied to the question of Palestinian statehood [endorsed by Ya’alon]. Of course, I mean no disparagement of Filipinos.

Before continuing, it should be noted that in 1898 the United States acquired the Philippines and Cuba as a result of the Spanish-American War,

Roosevelt’s April letter refers to a petition signed by a number of what he calls “very high-minded citizens” whose intention was to present the petition to the Republican and Democratic conventions in June. The petition urges the United States to “pledge itself to give political independence to the Philippines sometime in the future.”

Roosevelt regarded the petition not only as futile but as “purely “mischievous.” The Republican convention, he says, will not consider it because the Republican administration—meaning his administration—is endeavoring to better conditions in the Philippines and has met with great success in its efforts. Hence “it cannot afford to set back this particular work by doing something which would be worse than foolish.”

“The Democrats,” he continued, “may possibly adopt the program, for they may think they will get some votes by it; and they will be wholly indifferent to the damage done either to the Philippines or the United States, provided that damage does not unfavorably affect their chance in the [forthcoming November] election.” [Is something like this happening among Democrats today?]

Roosevelt questions the double-standards of southern Democrats who support the petition. These Democrats would apply the “consent of the governed” doctrine of the Declaration of Independence “to brown men in the Philippines” when these Democrats owe their presence in Congress solely to the fact that they have nullified the voting rights of the black man at home in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.

Roosevelt then questions the seemingly lofty motives of northern Democrats who support the petition. He does so in terms that may be applied, respectively, to many left-wing Israeli and American democrats vis-à-vis the Palestinians and the Iraqis.

It seems, he says, “that very many men who sincerely feel that they are conscientious have in this matter of the Philippines … became absorbed in the essentially … selfish task of sacrificing [their] duty to others to the business of trying to save their own souls. The easy thing, the cheap thing, to do is sign a petition or make a speech in favor of abandoning a difficult and doubtful task, washing our hands of all responsibility of the matter, leaving the Filipinos to the impossible task of working out their own salvation.”

“The hard thing, the wise and brave thing, is to keep on … working for the actual betterment, moral, industrial, social, and political of the Filipinos; the task of laying the foundation of growth which we believe will in the end fit them for independence.”

Roosevelt went on to say that the Filipinos “will not be fit for independence in the next half dozen years or dozen years, probably not in the next score or two score of years. Further than this we cannot say.”

Even though he personally believed the Filipinos would ultimately get their independence, to say this is to express “the belief of what will happen in a future too remote to entitle it to any weight among those working to solve the problems of the actual present …” Any such expression which the petition calls for would be misleading. “A promise of independence to the Filipinos means to them a promise of independence in a reasonably near future, or else [it] would be a promise to do them the utmost damage we can do—for this is precisely and exactly what granting them independence in the near future would mean. We are far more necessary to the Filipinos than the Filipinos are to us.”

“Freedom,” says Roosevelt, “does not mean absence of all restraint. It means the substitution of self-restraint from external restraint, and therefore can be used only by people capable of self-restraint … It is not a matter of reading Rousseau in the closet, but by studying the needs in each particular case.”

Unaffected by the cultural relativism that modulates radical democrats today, Roosevelt boldly asserts that “There are nationalities and tribes wholly unfit for self-government; there are others singularly fitted for it; there are many between the two extremes. Cuba we believed to be fit for it, provided we threw certain safeguards around her, and gave her a short preliminary training…. At the time many unwise people wished to turn Cuba adrift at once, to her own irreparable damage. This we declined to do. We kept her for four years and then gave her independence under certain qualifications. She is now more prosperous than any other Spanish-American republic of approximately the same size.” Of course, Batista and Castro had yet to appear when Roosevelt penned these words,

But consider what he said of Santo Domingo. “In Santo Domingo a hundred years of freedom, so far from teaching the Santo Domingoans how to enjoy freedom and turn it to good account, has resulted so badly that society is on the point of dissolution …”

Returning to the Philippines, Roosevelt points out that “the questions we have to decide are not in the least theoretical. They are entirely practical, and can only be decided if there is knowledge of the facts. The Filipinos are not fit to govern themselves. They are better off in every way now than they were before. They are given a larger measure of self-government than they ever had before, or than any other Asiatic people except Japan now enjoys.”

Roosevelt’s statement applies to the Palestinian Arabs, who prospered and enjoyed more individual freedom under Israeli rule than under the despotic rule of the Palestinian Authority.

Although the Philippines achieved independence on July 4, 1946, political instability and violence still punctuate life in that country. This would not surprise Roosevelt, who was a close student of world history, anthropology, and human nature.

We have no such statesmen like that in the United States, and certainly not in Israel whose political elites—to put it mildly—are backward compared to Theodore Roosevelt. So the leaders of the two countries continue to pursue the mindless and deadly charade of a Palestinian state. They seem to have learned nothing from history—something despised by Shimon Peres.

But are they really ignorant of the fact that a vast majority of the Palestinians are committed to Israel’s annihilation? Are they really ignorant of the fact that these Arabs have taught their children to emulate suicide bombers, and have even used them as bombs to kill Jews? Are they so blind or brainless as not to see that it would take one or two generations to overcome this barbarism, this genocidal hatred?

Or are they simply too timid to face the terrible truth that devastating violence may be required to sear from Muslim consciousness the ethos of jihad, the love of war, that has animated Arab-Islamic culture since Muhammad? Was not such devastation necessary to make warlike Germany and Japan peace-loving?

This is the ugly truth about Islam, so obvious in the Hitlerian statements of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and manifested in the Arab’s deliberate bombing of school children in Israel.

To negotiate with Muslims is worse than futile: it arms them and disarms us. When Teddy Roosevelt said, “talk softly and carry a big stick,” he was not referring to barbarians.

One last word. The devil has many disguises. He likes to appear as good, compassionate, peace-loving, even as a servant of God. He has disciples even among secularists in democracies. They will be found across the political spectrum—today concentrated among the cultural left. There is a mystery here—the “mystery of iniquity.” Does anyone believe that Israel’s ruling elites—so easy to accuse of folly and cowardice—have succumbed to the devil? Can the devil be defined as absolute egoism parading as altruism?

By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Source: Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, September 10, 2007. Presented as a preface to his May 4 commentary on Moshe Ya’alon’s Interview in The Jerusalem Post of May 1, 2009.

One of The New York Times’ favorite techniques for indoctrinating in the guise of news coverage is to casually assert something that advances its agenda and expect readers to take it at face value.

A Sunday story on Representative Eric Cantor, the new Republican House Whip, included the following declaration: “The [Republican] party also faces the burden of trying to advance what Mr. Cantor describes as its bedrock value — smaller government — in the face of considerable evidence that the American public wants an increasingly active government to deal with the economic crisis” (emphasis added).

If there is indeed considerable evidence that Americans want “an increasingly active government,” why doesn’t The Times offer any?

In fact, the evidence points in the opposite direction.

As the Senate was poised to vote on Obama’s $827-billion economic recovery plan last week, a Rasmussen Poll showed 62% of voters wanted it to include more tax cuts and less government spending. Only 14% wanted more spending and fewer tax cuts.

Is that a clear indication of the public’s longing for an increasingly active government?

Despite weeks of media shilling for Obama’s so-called stimulus plan — including persistent front-page advocacy in The Times — another Rasmussen poll shows only 38% of Americans think the lard-layered boondoggle will help the economy, while 29% said the plan will make things worse and 24% believe it will have little impact.

But if the public is panting for a big, brawny, activist government to lead us out of the current economic doldrums, shouldn’t they be cheering the Democrats’ plan deliriously?

In the age of media-anointed Obama, the American people remain what they’ve always been: skeptical of government activism and of the opinion that tax cuts, not spending, is the best antidote for a recession.

In a press release issued today, Republican Whip Eric Cantor offered to work with Congressional Democrats and President-elect Obama to revamp the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. He called on Dems to help the nation’s families provide quality health care for their children.

Seems like a reasonable goal that all people of all party affiliations could support, right? The problem is Democrats and their leaders promised to improve the middle class welfare prospects. That is what the conflict between the two parties has been about. Republicans like Cantor want to restore SCHIP to its original purpose: help low-income families who can’t provide health care for their kids–not adults, not middle class workers, nor anyone who already has insurance.

Now would be a good time for Dems to stop trying to make all Americans dependent on the federal government. They could do us all much good by actually fixing the political economy rather than stimulate to death.

The economy is already a rule based human activity of we humans. The first rule of Constitutional governance is less government is more liberty for everyone. This translated into terms relevant to a political economy means less bailout and more free market behavior. As financial advisors like Bill Bonner of Agora Financial, keeps saying, you can’t correct a credit/debt crisis by adding trillions more of the same. Can you help an obese man by giving him another helping of dessert, or cure an alcoholic by offering him free drinks? Of course not. The same applies to overspending, too much debt and bad credit.

In one sense, the underlying problem of the current economic depression is a moral one. More economic liberty without moral virtue regulating it produces much irresponsibility and corruption, which increases the dividends of injustice. Secularist may have great difficulty with a political economy that is strongly regulated by moral principles. Nevertheless, a morally self-regulated people would more likely regulate their own tendencies toward excesses, sexual and economic. They would be more apt to be less greedy and more just toward the less prosperous. They would be less likely to accept outrageous income at the expense of millions of fellow citizens. Persons not credit worthy wouldn’t get high interest loans. They would get a substantive economic plan to help them become credit worthy. Loan sharks couldn’t exist because greedy lawmakers and their corporate associates wouldn’t exist either. An unproductive vice like gambling wouldn’t have government backing because it would be much more difficult for corrupt politicians to openly justify preying on people with compulsive behaviors as a means to raise tax dollars. A moral economy would still reward entrepreneurs while assisting the less fortunate to work their way up to reasonable measure of economic independence. At least from the perspective of 18th century America, this would be expected because the primary source of morality is religion.

Helping poor families provide health care for their children should at best be a temporary aspect of an economy in which the principles of Jubilee are normative. This biblical law that makes helping fellow citizens through economic crisis to economic independence a legal obligation, should be the norm.

Punishing the poor with taxes, low wages, and high interest rates on loans they can’t afford is plain unjust.

Maybe God’s judgment is built into nature after all. The founders may have been right that it’s part of God’s natural law. It is apparent politicians can’t beat the system.

“If companies (e.g., banks) are big enough, and the country is rich enough, corporate managers and investors can use the government as the ultimate insurance policy to bail them out if speculative risks go wrong.”

— Robert A. Isaak (2005)

The above quote (also was written in Here’s A Thought section) is a rule of the global economy, according to Pace University professor of International Management Robert A. Isaak. This rule is evident in the history of the concept of competitive advantage that began with Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was further developed by British Economist David Ricardo. Competitive Advantage is Ricardo’s application of Smith’s idea about growing national economies by maximizing individual interests. Ricardo’s believed all nations would benefit more equally if all nations concentrated on one or few competitive strengths like producing steel, automobiles, oil, computer technology, etc. This was Ricardo’s idea of balancing trade and maximizing national prosperity.

German economist Frederick List and British philosopher John Stuart Mills both saw the necessity of protectionist policies by means of tariffs to allow the incubation and maturation of new national specializations, especially new manufactured goods and new technologies. These policies worked well for many years. The British hegemony of the 19th Century and America’s domination during the 20th Century prove that competitive advantage works. However, global economic hegemony is not possible without possessing the world’s key reserve currency.

America assumed global economic leadership (hegemony) with the creation of International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) at Bretton Woods. Through these institutions, America gained control of the global economy. At the same time. the dollar was fixed to the value of gold, which in 1934 was $34 an ounce.

American politicians began violating these policies of their own making to fund the rebuilding of countries devastated during World War II. It was not out of the goodness of their hearts; the aim of the Marshall Plan was economic growth and the creation of deterrence against Soviet aggression. Under the leadership of President Lyndon Johnson, our government continued to print money (increase the national debt) to fund the Vietnam War and his Great Society programs, which were meant to further the socialist domestic programs of FDR’s New Deal.

Yes, Democrats believe in war and its debt. FDR, LBJ, John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton were all Democrats and warring commanders-in-chief. Don’t expect Obama to be any less. This means Republicans like Bush are no more warmongers than democrats.

When it comes to screwing up the economy, liberals in Republican garb deserve as much credit as democrats. This is especially true of Richard Nixon, who removed America’s global currency from the gold standard. Why? He had to maintain big government spending. While Charles de Gaulle was dumping the U.S. dollard for gold, Nixon was dumping gold for a new system of floating IOUs. According to Professor Isaak,

Now a dollar was a good as you think it is. That paper IOU in your pocket is just a piece of paper based on a lot of belief. Currencies have become bets placed on the short-term futures of the national (or regional) economies that they represent. As money not just paper but credit cards and blips on computer screens, not only did the world economy speed up, but the uncertainty about the value of any of these symbolic commodities increased as well.

Liquid gold — oil — became one of those industry favored by competitive advantage with the legal blessing of government. Before the 1970s, western nations held that advantage. Then arose a bunch of disgruntled Arabs who formed OPEC to take away some of that economic advantage for themselves. Today, we here more about OPEC than the western oil cartel. But, as Equatorial Guinea’s national leader has demonstrated, the blessing of competitive advantage conferred on EG by the American oil cartel does not benefit the poor natives who still live on $1 a day. The citizens of EG do not benefit from their God-given natural resource. Only tyrants, both African EG and American, do.

When the World Trade Organization (WTO) replaced GATT, the rules changed to further benefit only the rich and powerful nations. The same has occurred with massive revolution of information distribution. The rich came to own and control the media, the cheap and often free means of information and its distribution, only to dominate culture, politics, and the economy. Only those who gain the attention of the world’s masses can control the information economy and modern technology–so much for democracy and capitalism.

Anyway, as an example of how the above quote works, Professor Isaak uses the rise of Mexico as a competitive oil producer. When oil was discovered in Mexico, Marxist economists from the Cambridge School of Economics in England advised Mexican officials to take out more loans than they could afford to pay back. By doing so, the Marxist believed “Mexico would ‘have the banks by the debt,’ and the U.S. government would have to step in and bail out the banks or the banks would have to write off the debts to avoid a global financial crisis.” This worked for by the 1980s the price oil fell making it impossible for Mexico to repay their loans, which initiated the severe economic recession of the 1980s.

Whereas British Marxist saw the demise of American hegemony, David Rockefeller, head of Chase Manhattan Bank, saw Mexico’s liquid gold as a treasure to be exploited. He too encourage Mexico to take out huge loans knowing the principal would not likely be paid back. Rockefeller believed that Mexican oil profits would continue to increase, which meant enormous repayment of loan interest. Based on this hypothetical growth, he and other American and European bankers believed risk would be worth it. However, his expectations were crushed with steep declines in oil prices.

As reported in 1987 by Melanie S.Tammen of The Heritage Foundation, Mexico’s oil-based debt was $100 billion and almost $30 billion was owed to American banks. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker encouraged Mexico to increase borrowing based on the belief that it would spur economic growth as well as solve the international crisis that began in 1982. By 1987, the American government initiated a 14 billion dollar bailout of our failing banks. This plan was the brain-child of both Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and James Baker, Treasury Secretary to Republican President Ronald Regan.

We should not forget that this was also the decade of gasoline rationing and the savings and loan debacle.

In 1995, oil-rich and Marxist Mexico was bailed out again. Fed Chairman Paul Volcker again advised Democrat President Bill Clinton to help bailout the Mexican economy as well our banks. This time the it took $50 billion.

Obama and other Democrats claim deregulation is one of the main underlying causes of the current economic crisis and bailouts. They were right. What they and the media withheld from the American public is the fact that deregulation began under Democrat President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat-controlled Congress, and a Supreme Court favoring deregulation.

Thus, Isaak shows why Rep. Ron Paul’s advocacy of returning the dollar to the gold standard, the economy to the original ideal of capitalism, and limiting federal government and its spending are necessary now. America’s political and corporate leaders are leading us down the path to disaster. If Gerald Celente of Trends Research Institute is correct, they are leading us into a crisis worse than the great depression, one resembling communist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ (USSR) pre-Perestroika food lines.

Sources:

Robert A. Isaak, The Globalization Gap: How the Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get left Further Behind (Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Printice-Hall, 2005), pp.161-182.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary gives a two-part definition of the phrase bait and switch:

1 : a sales tactic in which a customer is attracted by the advertisement of a low-priced item but is then encouraged to buy a higher-priced one

2 : the ploy of offering a person something desirable to gain favor (as political support) then thwarting expectations with something less desirable

Obama’s accusation that McCain’s health care plan is a bait and switch tactic is a classic example of part two. He claims McCain’s health care plan promises a $5,000 tax incentive to American families for the purchase of any health care coverage of their choice while at the same time taxing American consumers health care coverage.

Obama’s accurate depiction of a bait and switch scheme is impressive. However, he fails the honesty test when he claims McCain would tax individual Americans purchases of health care coverage. Obama tries to deceive America by suggesting that the money raised under McCain’s plan would be given directly to insurance companies as a tax increase. But, after reading McCain online counter argument, it appears McCain proposes to redirect current income taxes of individuals and families to help pay for their health care. Redirecting current income taxes payments for health insurance is not applicable to the uninsured. That is why McCain also proposes a non-profit state-based program to fund adequate health care for the uninsured. Such a plan conforms to the Constitution’s ideal of state republicanism as opposed to national welfare socialism.

Underlying Obama’s health care plan is the typical ploy of liberals: Whatever they accuse their opponents of is usually what they are guilty of themselves. This is no less true of his plan for universal health care. He preaches help for the middle class just as liberals before him did for the poor. While helping the poor into welfare dependency, liberals increased federal power over both the states and the lives of the poor. Maybe that is why many poor Americans refuse to deal with the socialist welfare system including applying for the States Children Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) or other Medicare programs.

What Obama does tell the middle class is that much of his health care plan is based on ferociously non-bipartisan Democrats plan for SCHIP, which was originally a Republican program to help low-income parents provide adequate health care for their children. As all other welfare programs, it did not end up just helping poor children, but also adults and even middle-income wage earners. That is why Democrats want Obama in office. They need a liberal in office in order to make the middle class welfare dependents too.

How Democrats propose to pay for SCHIP is by greatly increasing taxes on tobacco. Studies by the Center for Disease Control reveal that a majority of tobacco users are among the low-income population.

I hope that you can see where I’m going with this. The Obama-Democrat Party plan is an even better at bait and switch than McCain. By comparison, McCain really has failed in his purported bait and switch efforts. Unlike McCain’s plan, Obama’s will lead to taxing the poor to pay for the children of middle-income families’ health care. Should most of the poor quit buying cigarettes and other tobacco products the federal government would have to raise Medicare taxes on all workers in order to pay for the additional SCHIP deficits.

The only reasonable conclusion is Obama and his liberal supporters have increasing the power of government and its benefactors over the American people in view. It may not be good for freedom and independence, but as CNN and WTOP reports claim, it would be cheaper than McCain’s plan at least in the short term. A WTOP report claims taxes under McCain would be several hundred dollars greater than under Obama for a family of four with an annual income of $100,000. Yet, that same family would get about $2,000 in tax refund applicable to health care coverage under McCain’s plan. CNN reports that the total annual costs of Obama’s health care plan would be $65 billion per year and McCain’s $360,000 billion. But again, once the federal government has to pay for all of SCHIP and most of the middle class health care, the annual costs would likely exceed those of the McCain plan.

I said most of the middle class would eventually be covered by federal health care because Medicare would be cheaper than private provider plans. That might even be the case with a more efficient and competitive health care market. As Wal-Mart put many local family retailers, a big federal insurance program would eventually put individual health care providers out of the capitalism business. Just as Wal-Mart offered products that were cheaper but not better, federal health care would not be better or more convenient, which has been proven by other nations with universal health care. Knowing how much more the federal government often pays for products and services it’s conceivable that government-run health care would eventually cost more than before.

The cost not calculable in dollars is the additional loss independence and freedom both of individuals and their states.

On October 4, Real Clear Politics published an article by Thomas Sowell titled “Do Facts Matter?” In his commentary, Sowell outlines some pretty damning facts incriminating Congressional Democrats for creating the economic disaster America still faces. The following are some rather juicy excerpts:

“It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years– including the present year– denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.”

“It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

“It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today’s financial crisis.”

“Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.”

Sowell continues by addressing the issue of Democrats being against greedy CEOs and for the people. However, Democrats defended Frank Raines who was ousted a head of Fannie Mae for mismanaging it into financial crisis. Raines racked in $90 million a year a CEO of fat Fannie. So Congressional Democrats really do not care about CEO greed as long as it their man ripping off the the system.

If gets even better!

Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!

Even more interesting is the the implications that Raines was instrumental in the Fannie Mae’s campaign contributions to Obama, which was second only to Christopher Dodd, according to Sowell.

Sowell’s point is this: The accusations made by Obama, Biden, and the Democratic party that Bush’s “right-wing: ideology and deregulated financial markets are to blame is patently false. Democrat-led easy money, sub-prime loan policy debacle is largely to blame for the near-depression crisis.

If you look carefully at the $700+ billion bailout, most Democrats were strongly behind the taxpayer fix for their own mismanagement of national economic policy. Democrat party socialism is definitely a problem in a nation built on moral capitalism. As long the moral aspect was maintained the problem of human greed was kept in check. That check that keeps man-made economic policies and practices balanced needs to be restored. It Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin who are promising to do just that.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the graph below speaks volumes about the need for the Republican Party to communicate to America a consistent vision. The graph shows a steep incline of favor towards the Democratic Party since after mid-2006 while a correlative decline is charted for the Republicans.

As the Pew Research poll doesn’t tell us why the image of the Democratic Party is more highly favored, but my guess is it has something to do with the hyper-propaganda of liberals about the Bush’s supposed lies about the war, how bad the war is going, the strong oil ties of Pres. Bush and VP Cheney, and a prolonged campaign battle of Senators Clinton and Obama. Of course, the Democrats fail to mention that most of them had available the same data that Bush had. Most voted for going to war in Iraq and against terrorism. Many Democrats also have ties to the oil or energy industries as well as other multi-national corporations. War is heck. Yet, our troops have accomplished many humanitarian works in Iraq. A few hours ago, Nightly News reported on the many Iraqis who are reporting weapon caches and claiming more peaceful conditions and improved confidence.

I think some additional reasons for the decline of approval of the Republican Party are the divisions evident among its members. In many states, republican leaders are promoting and passing laws contradictory to conservative ideology and values. Gay special rights, abortion, and other controversial issues. It seems religion is a problem issue for Republicans while the Democrats are fully identifying with religion. The problem is in what is meant by religion. The cultural war between liberals and conservatives is still being waged as much in church and synagogue as in politics. Liberals have secularized their theology just as liberal have done to social policy. As Jonah Goldberg pointed out in his book Liberal Fascism, American liberals shared the same political deals and policies as did Mussolini, Stalin, Lennon, Hitler, and their successors.

The new star of the Democratic Party is more liberal than third way Clinton.

Some good news for Republicans is the decline of approval of a Democrat led Congress. According to the Pew chart below, the disapproval rating of Congress was 38% before the Democrats gained control. Today, the percent of Americans who disapprove of Congress is 51% — that is a 12% increase in about one year.

It seems a significant majority of Americans respond to Congressional paternalism by holding their noses and saying Pew-ee. (That’s the opposite of Yee Hah in poll language).

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Here’s A Thought!

If companies (e.g., banks) are big enough, and the country is rich enough, corporate managers and investors can use the government as the ultimate insurance policy to bail them out if speculative risks go wrong. -- Robert Isaak (2005)